LETTER: Council hands tied over Community Teacher funding cuts

12.00.00am GMT Wed 28th Feb 2007

Dear Editor

Labour's superficial attack on the Liberal Democrats decision to support - with a very heavy heart - withdrawing funding from the Community Teachers programme seems as ill informed as many of their interventions in the council chamber.

They fail to acknowledge that this decision is based on the Liberal Democrat view that Hounslow residents can not stand more increases in Council Tax at this time - and this inevitably means that significant cost reductions must be made.

I'm glad to say that investment continues to increase in local education and 'extended schools', but mistakenly these spending decisions are imposed on Hounslow by central government, rather than being left to local decision makers. This means that realistically the schools (who receive 'ringfenced' funding), not the council, would need to jointly fund staff doing the work of community teachers in future.

Unfortunately the ever stronger hand of central government (and unreformed Council Tax) under Labour leaves local authorities like Hounslow with too little room to design and fund locally appropriate education programmes. This leads to unpleasant consequences such as the closure of valuable programmes such as Community Teachers when they are no longer financially sustainable.

When Labour set out how much more heavily they want to tax Hounslow to fund their wish list (at a time when their party are letting the Olympics budget spiral out of control) I look forward to a meaningful debate.

Yours sincerely

Cllr John Howliston

Deputy Leader of Hounslow Liberal Democrats